The question concerning the equality of the sexes which was discussed so warmly some thirty years ago in Magazines and Debating Societies, was one upon which it was not easy to collect the Doctor's real opinion. His manner indeed was frequently sportive when his meaning was most serious, and as frequently the thoughts and speculations with which he merely played, and which were sports or exercitations of intellect and humour, were advanced with apparent gravity. The propensity however was always restrained within due bounds, for he had treasured up his father's lessons in his heart, and would have regarded it as a crime ever to have trifled with his principles or feelings. But this question concerning the sexes was a subject which he was fond of introducing before his female acquaintance; it was like hitting the right note for a dog when you play the flute, he said. The sort of half anger, and the indignation, and the astonishment and the merriment withal which he excited when he enlarged upon this fertile theme, amused him greatly, and moreover he had a secret pleasure in observing the invincible good humour of his wife, even when she thought it necessary for the honour of her sex to put on a semblance of wrath at the notions which he repeated, and the comments with which he accompanied them. He used to rest his opinion of male superiority upon divinity, law, grammar, natural history, and the universal consent of nations. Noting also by the way, that in the noble science of heraldry, it is laid down as a rule “that amongst things sensitive the males are of more worthy bearing than the females.”[1] [Footnote 1: GWILLIM.] The Salic law he looked upon as in this respect the Law of Nature. And therefore he thought it was wisely appointed in France, that the royal Midwife should receive a fee of five hundred crowns upon the birth of a boy and only three hundred if it were a female child. This the famous Louise Bourgeois has stated to be the custom, who for the edification of posterity, the advancement of her own science, and the use of French historians published a _Recit veritable de la naissance de Messieurs et Dames les enfans de France_, containing minute details of every royal parturition at which she had officiated.